Buy Your Hamfest Tickets and Tables Today!

General Admission and Vendor Bundle tickets (i.e. a flea market table and vendor admission) are on sale now in the RRRA online box office.

Your advance purchase gets you to the bargains faster at the Dakota Division’s biggest hamfest.

Don’t waste time in the ticket table line ‼️

AMSAT OSCAR 7: the Ham Satellite That Refused to Die

When the AMSAT-OSCAR 7 (AO-7) amateur radio satellite was launched in 1974, its expected lifespan was about five years. The plucky little satellite made it to 1981 when a battery failure caused it to be written off as dead. Then, in 2002 it came back to life. The prevailing theory being that one of the cells in the satellites NiCd battery pack, in an extremely rare event, failed open — thus allowing the satellite to run (intermittently) off its solar panels.

Advice for Parents and Grandparents on Getting a Young Person Interested in Amateur Radio

When I got my amateur radio Technician license in March 2019, most of my family were not licensed, the exceptions being my mom, who had held her Technician class license since her middle school years, and my grandfather, who had an Advanced license. However, neither of them was very active, aside from the occasional listen in on an 80-meter net here and there by my grandfather.

Despite their lack of activity, the fact that some in my family knew what amateur radio was gave me an advantage in the radio community right off the bat. They were willing to take me to local club meetings, Field Day setups, and countless other events that some parents might have taken one look at and turned away from. In fact, one of these outings, and a particularly significant one at that, provided some of the biggest reasons that I stayed involved with amateur radio.